In Kenya’s Mountain Forests, A New Path to Conservation

Kenya’s high-elevation forests are the source for most of the water on which the drought-plagued nation depends. Now, after decades of government-abetted abuse of these regions, a new conservation strategy of working with local communities is showing signs of success. Here is a good news story from Africa...

While much of the debate around climate financing focuses on “how much,” an equally important question is “how?” It is far from easy to strengthen resilience in places where environmental and climate-related risks also interact with pre-existing social, economic, and political stresses,...

ECC Newsletter Edition 1/2015

We have published the first edition of the Environment, Conflict, and Cooperation Newsletter in 2015. Read how foreign policy makers can use opportunities for green job creation to promote ambitious climate action, about linkages between climate change and fragility in Africa, or how climate change exacerbates conflicts between mining and herding in Mongolia.

Quote of the Month

"The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don’t act forcefully, we’ll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe.”
- Barack Obama, U.S. President, State of the Union Address, Washington D.C., 20 January 2015.

Articles

Ecuador's Secoya people, whose health was allegedly damaged by polluted water dumped by oil giant, take fight to courts

by Dominic Rushe

16 September 2011 - Victims of what they say is one the world's worst environmental disasters will on Friday ask a New York court to free up billions of dollars in compensation awarded to them in a record ruling earlier this year – and oust the judge who blocked their claim.

The $8bn fine was imposed by an Ecuadorian court in February on oil giant Chevron, on behalf of 30,000 residents of the Amazon basin whose health and environment were allegedly damaged by chemical-laden waste water dumped by Texaco's operations from 1972 to 1990. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001.

Chevron has attacked the judgment as a "fraud." The company has claimed the entire case is an extortion scheme. In March, Chevron secured an injunction from judge Lewis Kaplan against the decision, ahead of a trial set for November.

Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson said the Ecuadorians were guilty of "shocking levels of misconduct." He said: "The fraud that has been uncovered is undeniable."

Humberto Piaguaje, one of the plaintiffs, and a leader of the indigenous Secoya people of Ecuador's northern Amazon rainforest, said: "Chevron is the one that's the criminal here. They came to our lands, they destroyed our lives, our culture and left us in poverty."